Sam Cooke
I fell in love with Sam Cooke when I was 17 years
old. It was in my parents' flower patterned kitchen in the house I grew
up in, while listening to a musical biography on the radio, one Friday
night in Winter. I became mesmerised by what I was listening to and sat
there with my feet getting colder, not wishing to leave for even a
minute to go and find my slippers. Sam had been dead for seventeen
years but his songs sounded so fresh and radiant. I lamented and
calculated that our lives had overlapped by 62 days. Sam, tragically,
met a violent and somewhat mysterious end, and I felt greatly saddened
by his demise in a far away place so long ago – He would be the same
age as my father is now and forty one years on, I can only imagine what
more he could have gone on to achieve, given even half the chance.
At seventeen I had just started a four year graphics course at art school, starting dating my first girlfriend and started riding a twin cylinder motorcycle! And I was very much into The Buzzcocks, Pistols and The Ruts. I liked the passion and anger of John Lydon and the melody and freshness of Pete ‘Buzzcocks’ Shelly and of the late Malcolm ‘Ruts’ Owen. The punk scene in the UK was rolling over for New Wave and suddenly a voice from the past cut right across my musically framed path. I knew the songs, such as Chain Gang, Cupid and Twistin’ The Night Away, but I’d never before heard the name; Sam Cooke or connected and attributed the sheer expanse and wealth of his output to just this one incredible man. Sam may not have had the anger of the Punk rockers, but I certainly sensed the same passion and joie de vivre in his words and in his voice.
The following day I rode to Cheltenham to buy a cassette. I was rewarded with ‘Sam Cooke – The man and his music’ I realised that this collection of songs represented merely the tip of the iceberg, and so began my search for more knowledge about him and more of his music.
Several years later while
travelling back to Clapham from my Soho office, I found myself standing
next to a busker at Oxford Street. He was playing ‘Nobody Knows the
Trouble I’ve Seen’. I stood nearby facing the rail tracks and when he
finished I through some pennies into his guitar case and told him that
I liked Sam Cooke. He was keen to take a break for a few moments and
chat with me about our mutual respect for ‘Sam the Man’. This affable
busker invited me to sing a Sam Cooke song with him. I needed no
further encouragement and we launched into ‘Rome Wasn’t Built in a
Day’, struggling to cut my busking teeth, following a day at the
drawing board. One song lead to another and time flew by. We must have
looked an odd couple – I wearing my first red speckled, Mr Buyrite suit
and guarding my essentially empty attaché case. I eventually crawled
into the tail end of a dinner party as sometime past eleven. I duetted
with Peter the busker on several more occasions through the following
weeks and on one such occasion he presented me with a record entitled
‘I want your love’ – written, performed and produced by Peter Gilbert.
I still have it along with very fond memories of my busking days.
Peter, I wish you luck wherever you are.
Today I have a comprehensive collection of Sam Cooke discs and MP3 files loaded in iTunes and I only have to listen to the pleading of ‘Bring it on home to me’ or the soothing of ‘It’s alright ‘ to be instantly lifted to a different plane. The jewel in the crown is undoubtedly Sam Cooke, live at The Harlem Square Club in Miami in 1963, and I strongly urge every one of you to seek out a copy of this CD and play it in a darkened room, having first read the cover notes. You will be immersed in the heaving, hot and steamy club and will experience Sam at his finest, grittier and harder than all his studio work, whipping the crowd to a frenzy.
Sam may not be a painter, architect or a designer but his creative legacy and spirit have inspired me through the years and I have created many a brand identity or creative campaign with Sam singing next to me, driving me on.
Graham Dodridge